Learn 11 Odd Metaphors in English (What do they mean???)

0:00 Hello.

0:00 I'm Gill at engVid, and today we have a lesson on metaphors.

0:07 We've done metaphors before.

0:10 You'll find I have a few other lessons that refer to metaphors.

0:16 This one is about colourful metaphors that you would find perhaps in the news,

0:25 in references to politics and politicians.

0:29 So, the word...

0:31 This colourful metaphors in itself is a metaphor.

0:38 To call a metaphor colourful, you can see it's written in red,

0:44 so in a sense it's literally colourful.

0:48 But metaphorically, these metaphors are very, very strong.

0:54 They're meant to have a strong impact

0:57 and to create a strong picture in your mind.

1:02 Okay?

1:03 So that's the point of metaphors.

1:07 Another word for metaphors is imagery.

1:11 Imagery, so it creates a picture, an image in your mind.

1:17 Okay?

1:17 And they're often very...

1:19 They have a big impact when you hear them,

1:24 more than just ordinary, neutral language.

1:27 So, for example, when people are talking

1:32 about large sums of money, especially when...

1:36 To do with the government and how much money they're spending on...

1:41 On something.

1:43 It's called "eye-watering sums of money".

1:48 "Eye-watering" means, you know, your eyes are watering or the tears are coming

1:57 from your eyes because the amounts of money are so big.

2:03 But also, I think people's eyes water if they're in pain.

2:08 So, the idea is that the amounts of money being spent,

2:13 it's painful to think about the kind of money that's

2:19 had to be spent during the COVID pandemic, for example.

2:24 In the UK, a lot of money was spent trying to protect people's jobs.

2:33 People were put on furlough, which meant that they...

2:38 Their money was coming from the government

2:41 rather than from the company that employed them,

2:45 and the government was spending huge amounts of money

2:49 on that to help to preserve people's jobs so that they didn't lose...

2:55 Lose their job so that the company didn't fail, and so on.

3:01 So, billions and billions of pounds were spent.

3:05 So, that was eye-watering sums were being

3:09 spent on that employment scheme, for example.

3:15 Okay.

3:16 And then more recently, we've had this quotation from one politician in the UK.

3:24 The leader of the opposition accused the Prime

3:30 Minister of leading his troops through the sewer, which sounds rather strange.

3:42 I think the word "troops" you would normally have in the army,

3:50 and these would be soldiers rather than,

3:54 you know, MPs, but that's part of the metaphor.

3:59 We've got a sort of army metaphor as well

4:02 as mention of a sewer, which is where...

4:08 Well, when you flush the toilet,

4:11 everything goes down under the ground through the pipes in the sewer,

4:18 the sewage system, so it's a disgusting thing to think about.

4:26 So, for the leader of the opposition to say

4:32 that the Prime Minister is leading his troops,

4:35 meaning his MPs through the sewer,

4:38 this was a recent situation where the government were being accused

4:44 of corruption or trying to manipulate the political system in a certain way.

4:54 They had a vote in parliament about something to try to get

5:01 around a problem rather than to deal with the problem properly.

5:06 They were trying to get around the problem and to try

5:10 to avoid doing what they should have been doing,

5:15 and the opposition and people generally thought it

5:20 was a rather sort of corrupt thing to do.

5:25 So, this was the description.

5:28 The Prime Minister is leading his troops through the sewer,

5:33 and it's a very sort of unpleasant image for something.

5:37 That was a rather unpleasant situation.

5:44 And then something similar to that, well,

5:48 what happened after this, the next day the government decided,

5:53 "Oh dear, we'd better not do that, then.

5:56 It's causing so much trouble.

5:58 We won't do that.

6:00 We'll change our minds." So what...

6:02 They did a U-turn.

6:04 They were going to do things a certain way,

6:07 and they'd won the vote that allowed them to do it that way,

6:13 but it had caused so much trouble they decided, "Oh no, we'd better not do that.

6:19 We will look really bad if we go ahead with that." So, they did a U-turn.

6:24 So, doing a U-turn in real literal...

6:28 In a literal sense is usually if you're driving

6:33 a car or any vehicle and you're going along the road,

6:38 but then you want to turn round and go back the other way,

6:43 go back the same way you just came.

6:46 So, you go in a U-shape, you're going this way,

6:49 and then you turn and go back the other way,

6:53 and you're sort of creating the shape of a letter U.

6:58 So, to do a U-turn.

7:00 And in driving, when people learn to drive, they learn how to do a U-turn.

7:07 So, that's often used, especially with the present government.

7:12 They do tend to do U-turns every now and then.

7:16 They've said, "We're going to do this." For example,

7:19 everyone should wear a mask, but then a few days later they might say,

7:27 "Oh no, people don't have to wear a mask anymore.

7:30 Only...

7:31 Oh, if you're going shopping, if you're in a shop,

7:34 wear a mask, but otherwise you don't need to." So,

7:38 you know, if the government keeps changing their minds,

7:42 it's very confusing for people.

7:45 But, you know, that's how it's described, doing a U-turn.

7:50 And then, again, not long ago, one politician called some other politicians...

8:01 Or, no, she...

8:03 A politician called another politician "scum",

8:08 again through doing things a little bit unconventionally,

8:14 trying to do something a little bit in a sort of not a very honest way, perhaps.

8:23 And "scum" literally is something unpleasant sort

8:28 of floating on the top of some liquid, sort of dirt floating on the liquid.

8:36 If you see these pictures of polluted rivers and so

8:42 on with sort of chemicals floating on top, it looks horrible.

8:48 So, "scum", you can call people "scum", but it's a very strong term.

8:53 It's not a good idea to call somebody "scum".

8:57 And after the politician had called the other politician "scum",

9:01 she was asked if she was going to apologize for using that word,

9:07 because she'd sort of used it in private.

9:10 She hadn't really said it publicly, but she had been heard saying it.

9:16 And then she refused to apologize for quite a while,

9:21 but then after maybe a few weeks she did eventually say

9:28 she was sorry to have used that word "scum" about another politician.

9:33 Okay.

9:35 Right, so then this one.

9:38 "The final whistle hasn't blown yet." So,

9:42 this normally in a literal sense is in a sports game, perhaps football,

9:51 when at the end of the football match the referee blows

9:59 a whistle to stop the game because the time is up.

10:04 So that's literally the final whistle when the game comes to an end.

10:11 But this was used recently by a medical

10:16 officer who advises the UK government on...

10:21 On COVID and on, you know, lockdowns,

10:25 and wearing masks, and vaccinations, and everything connected with COVID.

10:34 And he was talking about COVID and how some people had sort of relaxed a lot,

10:42 they'd stopped wearing masks, they'd started mixing with other people,

10:48 getting a bit too close perhaps, not doing any social distancing.

10:55 And he was saying people have started to think that COVID has gone,

11:02 gone away, and it hasn't.

11:05 He was trying to get a strong message across that COVID is still around,

11:12 we're still, you know, at risk of infection and serious illness, and so on.

11:20 So he said the final whistle hasn't blown yet.

11:24 You know, it's not the end of the story yet.

11:28 So I think that particular person is well known for his colourful metaphors,

11:35 often to do with football, or other sorts of images,

11:40 to try to get a strong message

11:43 across to people that will influence their behaviour,

11:47 so that they will behave sensibly, sensibly,

11:51 and not help to increase the infection rate.

11:57 Okay.

12:00 Then just a few sort of general metaphors that are often used in politics.

12:08 "The elephant in the room", that's when people are discussing an issue,

12:15 but they're not really talking about the main issue.

12:20 They might be talking about small things when

12:25 there's a much bigger thing to talk about.

12:29 So it could be something like "the elephant in the room",

12:34 could be climate change, for example, that's the really big issue.

12:39 And then if politicians are talking about some small details,

12:45 they are ignoring "the elephant in the room".

12:50 You know, if there's an elephant in the room,

12:54 literally, you would know about it because it's so big.

12:59 So that's the idea.

13:02 Okay.

13:03 And then a tectonic shift.

13:06 If there's been quite a big change in something,

13:11 like maybe recently there's been a climate change conference,

13:19 you could say there was quite a...

13:22 It was quite a good, you know, progress, quite good progress was made.

13:29 I don't know whether you'd say it was a tectonic shift.

13:34 That remains to be seen in what actually happens next.

13:39 It was all based on talking and creating a document for people to agree to.

13:47 It's what people do next that matters.

13:50 We need a tectonic shift in the way what people

13:54 do next in terms of trying to reduce climate change.

14:00 But tectonic shift in a literal sense is

14:05 to do with tectonic plates in the Earth,

14:11 where the things that create earthquakes, if there's a tectonic shift,

14:19 that often causes an earthquake and maybe a tsunami,

14:25 waves coming in from the sea.

14:28 So a tectonic shift is a big movement of the ground underneath under our feet,

14:36 and it can cause earthquakes and tremors and so on.

14:41 So that's quite a big thing.

14:45 So if there is a tectonic shift

14:48 in the way people behave to do with climate change,

14:52 that is what we need to reduce global warming.

14:59 Okay, so next one, a landslide victory.

15:04 That's usually when there's an election,

15:08 people are voting for different parties,

15:11 and then if one party wins by a large number of votes,

15:17 that's called a landslide victory.

15:20 So in a literal sense, a landslide is when if there's a hill or a mountain,

15:28 but then all the Earth, often when it's rained a lot,

15:32 when it's been raining a lot,

15:35 and there's a lot of water collected in the Earth that's piled up,

15:42 it sort of slides down rather dramatically,

15:46 and suddenly you see it sliding down like this.

15:50 So that's quite a dramatic thing.

15:53 So a landslide victory is when one

15:56 particular party gets a large number of votes,

16:01 maybe unexpectedly, because landslides in the real

16:05 world are also unexpected as well, they just happen suddenly.

16:11 Okay.

16:12 Mud slinging, again in politics, this is what opposing parties do,

16:19 they sling or throw mud at each other,

16:24 they kind of accuse each other of bad things,

16:30 and if you throw mud at somebody, it's sticky,

16:34 so it will stick all over them, over their face and their clothes.

16:39 So mud slinging, if both sides are doing it,

16:43 then both sides will end up covered in mud,

16:47 and it's to make each other look bad.

16:51 So, okay.

16:53 And then finally, a witch hunt.

16:58 At one time in history, well,

17:01 women in particular were accused of being witches and were persecuted,

17:08 even executed for being a witch.

17:12 And so this term is used sometimes by politicians nowadays,

17:18 if they're being accused of doing something wrong

17:23 and they want to stand up against it,

17:26 they will call it a witch hunt to make it sound as if it's...

17:34 It's not...

17:35 It's not a valid criticism.

17:39 One particular politician used to do this, who was in power,

17:45 isn't in power anymore.

17:47 Every time that politician was accused of some sort of corruption,

17:53 or hiding something, or having done something wrong in secret,

17:59 that politician would just say, "Oh, it's a witch hunt.

18:04 It's...

18:05 It's just a witch hunt.

18:06 I didn't do anything wrong.

18:08 It's a witch hunt." It's to sort

18:11 of discredit the people who are making the criticism,

18:15 to try to get out of it and say, "No, it's not a valid criticism." Okay,

18:26 so I hope that's an interesting set of colourful metaphors for you.

18:32 If you'd like to do a quiz on this subject,

18:37 just go to the website, www.engvid.com, and try the quiz.

18:43 And thanks for watching, and hope to see you again soon.

18:47 Bye for now.